HOA's suck, but as REVLIS mentioned, try living somewhere without one. Most people won't take care of their shit. Our previous HOA sent letters from a third party HOA management company, with complaints about parking our motorcycles on our back patio (with covers on them mind you, perfectly clean and organized looking, no space in the garage or driveway). We'd move them temporarily, put them back and BAM 1 day later, letter in the mail. They are relentless and some yellow bellied coward can't even come over and tell us in person that they have a problem...

I own property in place with a HOA that at the time was shitty. It was a 5 member board so I got 2 other people and took advantage of a low turnout (we got enough people on our side to show up and make a quorum) and unseated 3 of the 5 shitty board members. We took control since we couldn't be outvoted and starting doing things the right way.

Moral of the story, bitching is easy and most of the time accomplishes nothing. If you want to change things grab the bull by the balls and make it do what you want.